03.06.1999

Peasants, workers and self-determination

Jack Conrad in the Weekly Worker (May 20) considers political issues dogmatically, in the sense that Lenin is infallible and the Bolshevik Party made no mistakes after the revolution. The wisdom of hindsight is denied, and this means Conrad glosses over the most serious mistake of the Bolsheviks, which is their instrumental attitude towards the peasantry.

In specific terms Conrad does not outline a critical analysis of the Bolsheviks and democracy in relation to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. Instead we are provided with a dogmatic description of events, and the deductive conclusion that the Bolsheviks were right to dissolve the Constituent Assembly. Indeed Conrad suggests that such an important action by the Bolsheviks was just a matter of expediency, not principle. Conrad contends that because the Constituent Assembly was primarily rightwing, with the majority being the Right Socialist Revolutionaries, there was no need for any fuss or agonising about dissolving it. The Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries were not organised efficiently at the time of the election, and this explained why they did not have a majority, which was a sufficient reason for closing down the Constituent Assembly. It was necessary to ensure that the Constituent Assembly did not become a rival alternative to soviet power.

Conrad’s analysis shows that he has a one-sided approach to democracy: participatory democracy is necessary for the proletariat, but bourgeois democracy is to be denied to the peasants, who did not vote according to what the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries wanted. Thus in the elitist terms of disregarding the election results the Bolsheviks closed down the Constituent Assembly as counterrevolutionary and reactionary.

The question then arises: how can the proletariat and peasant alliance be established and consolidated if the Bolsheviks are going to act in an elitist manner and repudiate an important aspect of the bourgeois democratic revolution? The peasants do not solely want land reform (to the Bolsheviks the peasants are concerned primarily about economic issues, which indicates that the Bolsheviks had an economistic approach towards the peasants), but they also want democracy and the formation and functioning of a Constituent Assembly. However, these democratic aspirations were crushed by the Bolsheviks.

This bureaucratic elitism facilitated the onset of war communism, or the coercion of the peasants in order to obtain food. Only when peasant revolts started to develop in 1921 against the continuation of war communism did the Bolsheviks finally recognise the need to return to the proletariat and peasant alliance, and they developed the New Economic Policy as the economic programme to meet the needs of the peasants. Nevertheless there was no return to bourgeois democracy, so the proletariat-peasant alliance was economic rather than political.

During the civil war the peasants mainly supported the Bolsheviks. This was not because they were politically sympathetic towards them, but instead the peasants knew that the victory of counterrevolution could lead to the return of semi-feudal economic relations to the countryside. Generally the peasants were treated by the Bolsheviks as instruments for the requirements of the urban centres, and only when war communism ended did the proletariat-peasant alliance start to be rebuilt, and the Bolsheviks started to return to the promises made in 1917, of involving the peasantry in the development of Soviet economic and political power.

Trotsky in his writings on China recognised the importance of the Constituent Assembly for the peasantry, and so seemed to have learnt the lessons of the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly by the soviet regime. In an often contradictory and ambiguous manner he eventually came to the conclusion that the soviets and Constituent Assembly were not counterposed, and the development of a Constituent Assembly was vital for expressing the views of the peasantry. The Constituent Assembly was important not just for the purpose of organising the peasants around democratic demands and for mobilising against the counterrevolutionary national bourgeoisie, but it was also important as a means to articulate the aspirations of the peasantry. Hence the Constituent Assembly and soviets could both exist as agencies for the development of participatory democracy, and they could both promote the revolutionary class interests of the proletariat and peasantry. Unfortunately Conrad is not in sympathy with the Trotsky of the 1930s. Instead he is still an uncritical supporter of the bureaucratic Bolshevism of early 1918.

The Bolsheviks are held by Conrad to be democratic in their approach to the national question. What Conrad does not recognise is that whilst being harsh with the peasantry, the Bolsheviks were soft on the national bourgeoisie in relation to the national question. National self-determination was unconditionally granted in circumstances that facilitated bourgeois counterrevolution against the proletariat and soviet power. This happened in Finland and the Ukraine. In Finland the granting of national self-determination facilitated the suppression of the proletariat through civil war, and in the Ukraine an alliance was constructed between the national bourgeoisie and German imperialism that was against the proletariat. Eventually in the conditions of civil war the Bolsheviks had to establish a new type of self-determination for the Ukraine in military terms. This was self-determination on the basis of the expansion of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Did this situation represent Greater Russian chauvinism? In the terrible situation of civil war the military expansion of the dictatorship of the proletariat occurred, and many nationalities effectively became part of the Soviet regime. Proletarian revolution as the basis of self-determination was not the problem, but rather that after the civil war the Bolsheviks did not allow the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries the right to political organisation.

One-party rule in the various republics of the new Soviet Union became increasingly bureaucratic and centralised, and this situation led to a suppression of nationalist aspirations. Hence in Georgia the Bolsheviks became critical of Greater Russian chauvinism, and Lenin was sympathetic about their complaints against centralised government. But whilst Lenin was against Greater Russian chauvinism, he did not advocate the bourgeois democratic plurality of political parties, and he was not for the re-establishment of the Constituent Assembly. Thus to Lenin national self-determination was based upon one-party rule, and so he continued to deny the importance of bourgeois democracy, which is necessary for real and meaningful national self-determination for nations that consist primarily of workers and peasants.

In the 1930s Trotsky called for an independent Soviet Ukraine and for the separation of the Ukraine from the bureaucratic centralisation of the Soviet Union. He stressed the need to fight for proletarian revolution as the basis of independence, because bourgeois Ukrainian nationalism could lead to support for German imperialism against the Soviet Union. On the other hand it is necessary to separate from the Soviet Union if the democratic aspirations of the proletariat and peasantry are to be realised. Trotsky shows (following Luxemburg) that the class content of national self-determination is proletarian, and it is necessary to oppose bourgeois nationalism that would deny the democratic aspirations of the proletariat and peasantry.

To Conrad the perspective of a bourgeois republic is the minimum programme of democracy, and this represents the transitional path to the maximum programme of proletarian revolution. In this process the working class becomes a revolutionary class. This is to equate class consciousness with dynamic human activity, or the mobilisation around democratic demands. But how do we get proletarian mobilisation? Conrad does not provide an answer.

In contrast to his activist approach it is necessary to develop a Marxist culture within the proletariat as the basis to establish the political independence of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie. It is not demands either for a bourgeois republic or a workers’ republic that initially mobilise the proletariat against the ruling class. Rather establishing political confidence requires developing a relationship between party and class, and this leads the proletariat to the self-belief that an alternative to capitalism is possible. There was support for the Bolshevik Party’s demands (land reform, bread, peace, all power to the soviets) that were both bourgeois democratic and proletarian in content, because the proletariat and sections of the peasantry began to believe that an alternative to capitalism was possible and acted under the leadership of the Bolsheviks to realise this aim.

Conrad divides bourgeois democratic demands (bourgeois republic, end to the monarchy, self-determination) from proletarian demands such as all power to the soviets/workers’ councils. The rigid separation of democratic and socialist demands is used to justify the development of a protracted historical stage of bourgeois democracy before proletarian revolution. Conrad essentially denies the relationship of bourgeois democracy to the peasantry, and so he projects bourgeois democratic revolution onto the imperialist countries where there is generally no peasantry. The class content of bourgeois democracy is mainly with the aspirations of the peasantry, but Conrad denies this and instead locates the proletariat as the main class of bourgeois democratic revolution.

Hence Conrad emphasises the mobilisation of the proletariat around democratic demands, and so denies the real necessity and possibility of organising the proletariat around demands that express an alternative to capitalism. This emphasis on democratic demands will not develop revolutionary consciousness, and so the proletariat will not organise around democratic demands that are disconnected from proletarian class demands. Instead the need to complete the remaining aspects of the bourgeois democratic revolution (abolish the House of Lords and the monarchy, establish proportional representation) are linked to realising proletarian revolution.

Conrad uses the comparison of Ireland and Kosovo in order to justify his Leninist self-determination approach. He refers to the reactionary content of 19th century Irish bourgeois nationalism, and argues that this problem does not deny the necessity for self-determination.

Possibly a more explanatory indication of the complex nature of the Irish struggle for independence is provided by the 1916 Easter uprising. The uprising was based upon a political unity between progressive sections of the bourgeoisie with the proletariat, with Connolly the proletarian military leader of the uprising. Hence an anti-imperialist united front was established to struggle for Irish liberation from British imperialism.

Conrad seems to want to re-establish the anti-imperialist united front within oppressed nations such as Ireland, when they are in conflict with imperialism. But historically this unity was essentially formal, and the Irish national bourgeoisie was concerned to ensure the subordination of the proletariat in 1916 and afterwards. Petty bourgeois republicanism vacillated between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and in 1916 petty bourgeois nationalism accepted Connolly’s leadership of the uprising. However, with the subordination of the proletariat in the independence struggles of 1918 the petty bourgeois forces accepted the goal of a capitalist united Ireland. Thus in the midst of what seems to be a united anti-imperialist struggle class antagonisms are still present, and are dominant when explaining the political results of the independence conflict: the Irish bourgeoisie establishes its hegemony over the proletariat. This does not mean that the struggle for self-determination should not be supported, but it is necessary to establish proletarian hegemony if capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination is to be overcome.

In relation to Kosovo the KLA is bourgeois nationalist and accommodates to imperialism, and will possibly accept Kosovo becoming a Nato protectorate. This analysis does not deny self-determination for Kosovo, but it is necessary to develop proletarian leadership of the national struggle, which means trying to establish a workers’ republic of Kosovo, and this is connected to developing workers’ republics in the rest of former Yugoslavia. Is this approach a denial of bourgeois democracy? No, because the bourgeois democratic revolution (establishing the Constituent Assembly, etc) connects to the proletarian revolution, and the realisation of the bourgeois democratic revolution cannot be obtained under the leadership of bourgeois nationalists, who are dominated by imperialism.

Conrad maintains that Lenin decisively defeated the views of the so-called imperialist economists between 1915 and 1916. However, this term justifies a caricature of the position of Luxemburg, Bukharin and other left Bolsheviks. In contrast to Lenin’s crude labelling, the left Bolsheviks did not uphold a position of imperialism being progressive and capable of resolving the national question. Instead they maintained that because imperialism was dominant on a world scale the national bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations could not establish national self-determination. The national bourgeoisie could realise political self-determination, but the oppressed nation would still be dominated by imperialism.

A national war for liberation under bourgeois leadership could not overcome imperialist domination, and such struggles were often subordinated to the interests of inter-imperialist rivalry. In general this perspective explains the history of 20th century struggles for national emancipation, but there are exceptions, such as in Vietnam, China and Cuba, where mass peasant armies under bourgeois leadership have carried out bourgeois democratic revolution in a bureaucratic manner. On a world scale the bourgeoisie has been counterrevolutionary and subordinated to imperialism, and proletarian revolution has been needed to realise self-determination.

What is progressive about national self-determination? The proletariat and peasantry in alliance can try to establish their political independence from the national bourgeoisie and emancipate the nation. Trotsky established two types of revolutionary strategy for bringing about national emancipation. Firstly, revolution in the oppressor imperialist nations will give economic and cultural help for the liberation of the oppressed nations. Secondly, revolution in the oppressed nation will facilitate world revolution, that will be the material basis to build socialism.

In contrast Conrad seems to propose the formation of a bourgeois republic, but this will be subordinate to imperialism. Only proletarian revolution can overthrow imperialism and establish progressive self-determination.

Phil Sharpe